Every so often, a team finds itself representing something more
than the name on the uniform. It is touched by a power beyond
itself, a force that supersedes deep desire and tangible strength.
Such as last winter, when the Fennville High (Mich.) boys
basketball team, in the wake of its star player dying on the court,
after a game-winning shot, gathered and soldiered onward for a deep
run in the state playoffs.
Every so often, a team finds itself representing something more than the name on the uniform. It is touched by a power beyond itself, a force that supersedes deep desire and tangible strength.
Such as last winter, when the Fennville High (Mich.) boys basketball team, in the wake of its star player dying on the court, after a game-winning shot, gathered and soldiered onward for a deep run in the state playoffs.
Such as the previous winter, when the New Orleans Saints, not just a football team but the foremost symbols of a region devastated by a deadly natural disaster, came back to win Super Bowl XLIV.
Such as March 1990, when Loyola Marymount University, after watching its star player collapse on the court and die, summoned a magical run in the NCAA tournament.
Now here comes the 2011 Cal baseball team, facing its own adversity, riding a prolonged wave of emotion all the way into the College World Series this weekend.
Like Fennville and New Orleans and LMU, Cal’s cause is bigger than the individuals or the collective or the games. The Bears spent much of the past six months operating not in memory of loss of life but with the threat of losing something for which they live.
“For us, baseball is life,” shortstop Marcus Semien said Tuesday.
This is about nine months after the team was requested, via e-mail, to attend a meeting. The grim faces of school officials, including athletic director Sandy Barbour, immediately darkened the room. The baseball program, they were told, would be discontinued after this season. Budget cuts.
Just like that, cold economics imperiled 118 years of history and, more immediately, invalidated the primary reason many of these young men, from as far away as Maryland and Virginia, came to Berkeley.
“We were angry, upset,” pitcher Matt Flemer said. “It’s never good being punched in the gut, especially before you even start practicing.”
Within seconds, a cause was born. Alumni, parents and a concerned community established a program to raise the $9 million needed to save Cal baseball. Former Bears players, including 2000 N.L. MVP Jeff Kent, delivered financial aid. There was no knowing if the effort would pay off.
Meanwhile, effectively given layoff notices, the players bonded around a common goal of making baseball an essential program at Cal.
“They wanted to show people we weren’t disposable,” coach David Esquer said.
As college students, they didn’t have much money to offer. So they focused their energy on the field. They were unified in their animosity toward the university power structure and, not to be dismissed, college baseball observers who projected mediocrity.
The Bears won six of their first seven and, with the program still facing closure, ended March with a seven-game win streak and a 17-5 record. Though the quality of the program was not at issue, the team nonetheless made a resounding, positive statement.
They played as if there were nothing to lose. Of course they did. What, to them, would be more of a loss than taking away the thing they enjoyed most?
“One of the Washington State assistants we know came up to a couple of us,” Semien said, recalling a three-game sweep of the Cougars in March. “He said, ‘You guys are playing with a serious chip on your shoulder. How can I get my guys to play like that? “‘
Well, coach, you can’t — unless you relay a message about killing the program.
Upon receiving news in early April that the required money had been raised and the program would be saved, Cal momentarily responded with its least inspired baseball of the season. The Bears were 6-8 in April.
“We relaxed a little bit,” Flemer conceded.
They have since rediscovered their edge. Reaching the NCAA tournament in Houston, the Bears won four of five games to advance to the Super Regional last week in Santa Clara, where they won two games against Dallas Baptist by a combined 13-2 score.
That was enough to send the unseeded Bears to the CWS in Omaha, where their reward is facing No. 1 seed Virginia.
Their journey has had a dash of March Madness Cinderella, a dollop of turmoil and a generous sprinkle of passion. Though Cal is a solid team, its greatest attribute is not an arm or a bat or a glove but the collective heart. And the intangible force.
“It’s not life or death,” pitcher Flemer said. “But you can tell the impact this thing has had on every one of us.”
Do such sports stories validate the presence of a higher power? Maybe. Are they indicative of individuals finding more than they thought they had? Possibly.
Undoubtedly, though, they are the kind of stories that never get old.
— Column by Monte Poole, The Oakland Tribune
